Angela Merkel has suggested Germany and Europe can no longer rely on the US under Donald Trump.

Speaking at a campaign event held in a Bavarian beer tent, the German Chancellor emphasized the need for friendly relations with the US, Britain, and Russia, but added: “We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands. The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days.”

While Germany and Europe would strive to maintain relations with the US and Britain, Ms. Merkel said, “we need to know we must fight for our own future as Europeans for our destiny.”

Her comments came after Mr. Trump said he needed more time to decide if the US would continue backing the Paris climate deal, which has frustrated European diplomats.

Mr. Trump, who has previously called global warming a hoax, came under concerted pressure from the other leaders to honor the 2015 Paris Agreement on curbing carbon emissions.

G7 leaders went on to blame the US for the failure to reach an agreement on climate change, in an unusually frank statement which read: “The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics.

Mr. Trump has reportedly told “confidants” including the head of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt, he wants the US to leave the international agreement on climate change, the Axios news outlet reported, citing three sources with direct knowledge.

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129 thoughts on “Merkel Bashes Trump, Wants Europe to Control Its Own Destiny: EU Hypocrites”

The US has certainly pulled it’s weight for decades in pursuit of full spectrum domination, nation wrecking and funding, arming and empowering terrorists. As well as normalising undeclared war, extra judicial murder and civilian collateral damage. The one thing the US is very good at is invoking the power of nightmares and then making them real by fighting to create enemies where none existed.

The problem is many US voters seem to have the attention span of a goldfish and the mental capacity of a 3 year old.

Especially in the ME where swearing undying allegiance and vast sums of tax payer support to bankroll the fake abomination and it’s ongoing theft of others land and resources by a murderous supremacist criminal cult of Eastern European imposters, embezzlers and liars, has become the principle requirement of all candidates running for POTUS.

Failure to do so invokes the wrath of the fifth column running US foreign policy and much of the bought and paid for congress.

I gather that you haven’t kept track of the number of coal-fired electric generating stations that have been closed in the US or the effects of increased CAFE standards. We have “done” a lot even though there is more to do.

As with medicine, it has proven far more profitable to treat illness (or conflict) than cure it. The politicans and MIC are the only ones winning and we are so worried someone might be victorious in a conflict but we do infinitely more damage by keeping them burning for decades,,,see NK,Palestine and all of the ME and Africa.

The real idiocy of the European response is the belief that Trump cooked this new strategy up at his desk in the WH all alone. The new strategic thinking must represent some depth within Administration circles and beyond about America’s future relationship with Europe. Why should America and Britain bend to what Merkel deems to be right and proper?

Your Germany-is-equal-to-a-state assertion is a stretch, Ron. For starters, the population of Germany is more than 80 million. That’s twice the population of the U.S.’s most populous state, California and four times that of New York.

Germany also has sixteen states, three of which are city-states–Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg. Neither California nor New York has any states, city or otherwise.

A third example: Germany spends about 19% of its GDP on national defense. New York and California have their own National Guards, but the state spending for them is comparatively trivial.

I have a feeling that Trump stopping Germany from dumping its cars is the real reason behind Merkel’s rant. I guess she thinks that Germany profiting from a weak Euro is something Germany worked hard for. Trumps 35% tariff will take care of that. Up next, Tokyo.

Trump hasn’t stopped anything. Maybe he should make all those German carmakers abandon their US plants in Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina putting his voters out of work. All Trump does is flap his gums and produce a lot of hot air.

we should be producing our own cars, and cheaper cars for new drivers. That would revive American industry, and they could stop with all the restriction, and stop with mandatory insurance for cars which are worth less than the insurance premiums.

India has a lot of cheap cars and that seems to be working out quite well for them.

Merkel is upset because the Trump Administration will not continue to toe the line on every aspect of the global agenda set by the EU. Give me national sovereignty over supranational nannycrats any day. I give Trump a thumbs up on this one.

Sounds like German industry and polity is worried they have priced themselves out of competitive markets, and need the kind of backstop only a large scale military buildup can provide……. Nothing like an arms race, and subsequent skirmishes, to put Europes millions of unemployed back to work….

They are concerned that the USA will gain a competitive advantage if not lumbered with the same rules as the EU.

It’s time to stop subsidising defence of the EU via USA and UK debt whilst being their biggest customers so subsidising their social programs.

A few points.

1) G7 – Notice Merkel inserts EU in speech so in effect G7 + USA. On purpose. Means Germany, France, Italy get influence individually and via EU. They are hijacking it and becoming G8. No accident.

2) What Merkel has said is not new. Mogerhini has alluded to it. Stated plainly the EU intends to be a superpower and Verhofstadt has stated Empire ambitions. They are stuck with 19th century thinking. Thus is a dangerous way to proceed.

3) Merkel has warned German industry about Britain, meeting in Berlin recently – expect German work with French against UK.

It’s a joke to think of them as a world power. Their military has no force projection capability, their biggest bank is struggling to stay afloat, too much money is tied up in economies like Greece and Spain, and they need our business. Germany (and France) are world powers only in their own provincial minds.

Regarding Merkel’s G7 comment, “We have a situation where six, or if you also include the EU seven, are against one.” I was thinking the US could reply, “We have a situation where, if you also include the individual states and the United States, 51 are against 7. So there.”

Progressives have been successful in indoctrinating societies into pacifist or non-violent mentality, so we can bet this “threat of war” will be used to cower populism back into submission. Modern people are barely willing to work, much less fight and the few that are have been subsumed into the leftist brigades who will actively work to intimidate and silence any thought of resistance to globalism.

I do not fear any international war, I fear CIVIL war…a world civil war.

One political group is quite happy to split the voting populace into smaller and smaller interest groups. In the UK it’s Lib Dem and Labour, from the outside it appears to be the Democrats in the US. Divide and rule.

Think about it…Here is a guy with three aircraft carriers steaming towards a madman in Korea who threatens to prime ballistic missiles to launch against America and this lady expects him to bend his mind and plans just to suit her.

The ‘we are Europeans’ meme is looking very tired, and they already took European destiny into their own hands, as far as they were capable of.

The ‘Europeans’ are generally more interested in plundering their own and each others countries as far as possible. Ask them to ‘fight for Europe’ and they will think you are deranged. Loyalty to Europe stops the moment it is placed over loyalty to self or own nation.

I read somewhere once that the US’s impact on global warming is roughly 1/30th of China and India. So even if they take steps to reduce that impact by 96.66666666666%, it’d be equivalent to those countries doing the same thing, to the tune of 3.33333333333%. People are stupid.

The entire premise of progressivism is “control”, so how can they rightly claim their principles while admitting that ANYTHING is outside of their control. Ancient rulers would claim human sacrifice would yield crops and even the sun rising. Progressives should at least be able to control basic economics and climate.

One is rich because they have loaned everybody money to buy their production, much of it money they will never see repaid.
The other is broke because they owe everybody money which they used to buy every piece of crap imaginable, and have NO intention of EVER paying it back.

An they both have unsustainable and growing dependency class populations that will eventually take them down.

but, the Germans have little debt and live well within their means. They save like Yankees of old. They make stuff that people want to buy. Their welfare dependent class is small. They think a mortgage needs to be paid down as fast as possible.

We don’t save, think financial engineering is a value added activity, 40% of households live off the government, and think getting a second mortgage to pay for a vacation is normal.

Germans have a problem summed up in this statement of old….”ruthless German efficiency”. We will have to wait an see how their many positives are offset by their negatives. Their prosperity and financial conservative nature have made them a magnet to the freeloaders of the world who have found an open door created by globalist progressives playing upon German’s good nature and arrogance of success.
Judging from past “experiments” things could get very dicey.
Debt ultimately is NOT money but promises, obligations made, that when failed lead to consequences. A massive population of foreign freeloaders with jihadi tendencies that are suddenly left hungry is a time bomb. And Germans are being suppressed by their government from speaking out…and things are not even BAD yet. Their local police are suppressing locals from reporting crimes, and those that do are called Nazis. The Germans that have worked hard to build something, are like anyone else. They will happily be generous with other people’s money but once it becomes obvious that it is coming from their pockets, from their liberties, they will react. Most of the western nations are suffering from this coming mess and I think it will prove irrelevant as to how much debt or assets appear on their balance sheet. Survival requires REAL things…food and shelter, NOT money, especially not money that has lost its credibility.

Vooch, undoubtedly the US has some bad numbers. The challenge for Germany is the Islamic nature of their “visitors”. So far Hispanics are not pushing religious intolerance and still seem mostly satisfied to work. It’s a matter of just fading away or resulting in large scale violence.

Illegals – whether hispanic or of other ethnicity – are stealing jobs from our own underclass and pile on more government service expense on to the shoulders of our US taxpayers. Also, illegals account for a sizable portion of our prison population – that we must pay for. Plus, they harm prospective LEGAL immigrants who wish to come to America but are placed on hold because the illegals beat them to the punch bowl.

IMO that is a form of financial domestic terrorism. Whether they blow up buildings or blow up our nation’s financial system or social norms – all of it damages the integrity of the fabric of America.

Merkel subtly forced the UK out of the EU and so now they can begin to build their EU Army. The CIA and MI6 should devote resources to watching the EU and the increasingly arrogant Germans. All this is doing is laying the foundations for a new Reich and a European War.

I think that if you talk to any educated German, you will hear that the LAST thing most Germans want is “a new Reich.” They are still very much affected by the horrors their country inflicted on the Jews in World War II, and they want no part of being in a military driver’s seat of any kind.

“An EU army built largely around French and German units … first thing they will do is march on Russia and promptly surrender.”

Half of the French men of military age were killed or wounded in WW1.
Germany was devastated by WW2.

Most Americans have never seen war up close and personal.

From the writer of a stock market newsletter: “Anyway time rolled on and Ritchie went to Vietnam. What came back however, wasn’t Ritchie. The day he rolled into town, he walked right past my cousin and I. We were confused and called out “yo Rich, glad you’re back!” And ya know what? He didn’t recognize us. It took him a minute to roll back time and finally snap out of it and say hi. A year later, Ritchie killed himself. On Memorial Day.”

Agreed Let EU save themselves. Take that deal fast, before
They change their mind. Bring our Boys home, Close all the bases.
Auction off everything from trucks to All Terrain truck type Missiles launchers. Have Ritchie Brothers or Iron Planet!! Auction everything!! By the piece by the lot by the battle field or Border!

Bring all the troops home have them guard airports, sea ports and railroads. That’ll stop all the knock off from China !! Have the military rebuild all the railroads, spill ways dams and flood water holding ponds, water treatment facilility’s , power plants,
Keep all the Italian Sewer And Water Contractors.
Think about it.
Make the deal Donald!

This is the smartest comment here, albeit inadvertently. Look at the money we will save if we downsize our foreign bases.

Basically all we need is a tripwire. Put a couple of dozen infantry troops in very small, cheap forward bases so if anybody invades they know they will run into American troops immediately, and that we will support our own troops with extreme vigor. That will stop any plans to invade a NATO country dead in its tracks.

We can do this for the cost of a scout jamboree – The U.S. Army should be able to rotate fresh troops through 100 small field bases on a six month basis and keep the vast majority of troops at home ready for deployment. Our infantrymen can last six months in the field with minimal provisions and supplies and fixed infrastructure. It is called camping.

Smartest in my opinion, yes. My comments represent my opinions, so they are all about me. I do have a large ego.

Now, what part of my statement can you contradict? Do you think the tripwire proposal won’t work? It is what we are using in South Korea. Do you think that we won’t go and support our troops if they are attacked?

The EU and especially Germany are scared. They had a plan, but a major part of that plan relied on the US and the UK submitting and playing their role. Trump and Brexit trashed that and now Germany is holding the bag. Tariffs on German cars, and no globalist climate payout? And just when they were getting their population mix JUST RIGHT.

Ha, every American election there is a lot of whining in European capitals that they should have a vote too because America has extra-ordinary influence on world affairs. Of course it goes unsaid that much of this American influence is due to the fact that it is willing to put dollars and military might on the line. Europe wants to play, but is unwilling to put up an ante, and folds every time a tin-pot dictator throws in a chip.

The Obama/Euro intervention in Libya was of course a huge disaster and has created a terrorist hellhole that is proving very hard to mend. The red-lines in Syria were all bluster and the “solution” of training Sunni terrorists and shipping weapons to them has proven extremely counter productive.
The other big Obama/Euro attempt at a foreign policy success, the war in Ukraine, has resulted in another shattered nation, 1000s of needless deaths and a very pissed-off Putin.

Nobody in Europe is willing to die for Ukraine (although the fat elite in Brussels is willing to have a number of stupid conscripts die for Ukraine). If Trump uses his influence to stop further IMF loans to Ukraine then the EU will have to pay the bill (loans that of course will never be repaid) and will probably fold like a wet blanket.

Trying to contain Russia, Iran and China all at the same time is a recipe for pushing them together. Trump is smart enough to figure out that the global elite (and the wrecked financial system they have build) is a bigger risk to America (and Europe too) than Putin will ever be. With the global elite spending every day screaming “Fuck You” at Trump he is probably preparing a big FU in return. Being a smart salesman he will not give Putin anything for free, but he can hand-over the whole Ukraine mess for Merkel to sort out by herself.
And don’t forget that the unholy Putin/Iran/Syria/Turkey alliance can wreck Europe whenever they want by shipping out another million of Syrians.

Our dear leaders in Brussel are fat, tired and corrupt. Should some islamic terrorist group succeed in blowing up the Euro parliament it will probably be the biggest celebration in Europe since the German surrender in WW II.

Let me get this straight. Refugees aren’t a threat to Europe but global warming is because the US won’t spend trillions of dollars on it. I say let Ms Merkel and Germany go their own way, slap import tarries on their auto exports, raise emission standards on their autos, make them use US local content in their US assembly plants, all those good ideas while we pull most of our troops out of Europe. Yep, works for me.

“Let me get this straight. Refugees aren’t a threat to Europe but global warming is”

You should have stopped there instead of prat falling in the rest of the comment.

Refugees will kill some people, that is demographics. But our murder rate is much higher than Germany’s, and we are doing nothing to bring that down. Also, since GDP growth is the sum of population growth (as a proxy for workforce size) and productivity increases (which are linked to tertiary education investment), then refugees aren’t a threat but an investment.

Global warming is of course a grand conspiracy to stick it to the American Taxpayer. Tyndall, a devious Irishman, in 1859 realized that American taxpayers would need to be fleeced in the first few decades of the 21st century, so he invented Climate Science and the greenhouse effect. He and his secret band of followers then managed to create a huge cabal of scientists in every nation to participate in this grand conspiracy. Thankfully some clear thinkers with no training in the pertinent areas can see through this, even if, for some reason, they won’t bother to write any scientific papers. Strange.

Don’t bother reading it, do the research. You’ll find it.
80% of last 500M years have been in that state.
It’s not all about YOU and HUMANS, we are not significant.

“A “greenhouse earth” or “hothouse earth” is a period in which there are no continental glaciers whatsoever on the planet, the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (such as water vapor and methane) are high, and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) range from 28 °C (82.4 °F) in the tropics to 0 °C (32 °F) in the polar regions.

Causes of greenhouse earth
There are several theories as to how a greenhouse Earth can come about. The geological record shows CO2 and other greenhouse gases are abundant during this time. Tectonic movements were extremely active during the more well-known greenhouse ages (such as 368 million years ago in the Paleozoic Era). Because of continental rifting (continental plates moving away from each other) volcanic activity becomes more prominent, producing more CO2 and heating up the Earth’s atmosphere. Earth is more commonly placed in a greenhouse state throughout the epochs, and the Earth has been in this state for approximately 80% of the past 500 million years, which makes understanding the direct causes somewhat difficult.”

Should be easy for you to write a paper and overturn 200+ years of accepted science based on your analysis. You’ll also get a Nobel Prize for your effort.

Or, alternatively, you could be completely wrong in your assumption and that your naive belief that climate scientists have been pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes and you are the only person who can see clearly, might just be wrong.

Normally refugees aren’t a threat. and normally refugees are self-selecting. No one from Ireland during the 19th century came here for the welfare check nor did they seek to keep themselves isolated from the rest of society. But when refugees migrate to a country where the welfare is given as a gift for merely being in that country, then there is little incentive to find employment. When refugee camps, settlements, and communes encourage non integration into the larger society, then the combination of welfare and isolation works against a country’s growth and development.

Now you talk about the sum total of population growth as a direct input on GDP. And that somehow, when refugees enter into a country, take the welfare, and then proceed to stay out of the workforce, that this is a good thing. I must have missed something. Now if migrants come into a country actively seeking work they they contribute to the overall productivity and GDP of the country. But if they come and exist on welfare and other supplements, then please tell me how it is that they are contributing to the productivity and GDP of the country? Most of the refugees that migrate into Europe and the US from the middle east aren’t here for the opportunity to become like the rest of us and integrate into the culture. They don’t come here to work, they come for the welfare, the free ride. Yes, there are those who see Europe and America as opportunities to become middle class citizens, but they are the few, not the many. Go take a good look at Sweden and tell me how all those Islamic refugees are adding to the GDP in Sweden.

One may debate the beginning of AGW, but such a debate is an exercise in wasted intellect. Who really cares if it was some Irishman? what is more important is that AGW is a false God for the environmentalist crowd. Yes, climate change is real, always has been, always will be. Climate change happens all the time, every day, every year, every century, etc. the question is to what degree and what part, if any, does mankind, civilization, etc, play in this constant change. Ah, that is the problem. We fancy ourselves that we can change the environment at will so completely. I have my doubts on that premise. What I do know is that a good deal of our pollution is not good. Pissing in the soup won’t make it taste any better and could kill you. Yes, there are a good many examples of man made pollution that needs to be curbed, reversed, eliminated. It needs to be done not because we are so green hearted, but because it is pragmatic. And pollution comes in many forms. When I drove truck there was not a highway, and interstate, or city street where i did not see trash on the side of the road. We are pigs compared to other countries. Here in France I rarely see trash on the side of the road anywhere except near migrant camps.

Now, do we need the king of alarmist environmentalist bull shoi that keeps popping up on NPR? Please, noise pollution is real, someone cut the power to the transmitters. We have cleaned up coal fired power plants well, I don’t see a need to spend any money chasing zero particulate emissions. Our automobiles are pretty clean, why are we demanding zero pollution from them? My point is that in cleaning up pollution we need to clean the worst offenders but once we get to that 98% clean we come into the problem of diminishing returns. Just like the old Shell gas mileage competitions (I still remember the commercials) if you want to get a hundred miles to the gallon, you pay severe penalties that make that one hundred miles per gallon unreasonable.

But back to climate change. there is an excellent web site called “Whats up with that”. If you really wish to become conversant in climate change, then go there and learn more than a little history. it’s the science that matters and these scientists know their stuff. They also have a wide range of expertise. The number of factors that are involved in climate change are enormous and we are still learning a little every day how the earth really works. Can it be modeled by computer? Maybe one day if we had enough computers and far better programming, but do count on it. AGW is crap science, but climate change is real science. Is it what the greenies say it is? Not even close.

Well the Irish came over, brought their grievances with them, and funded multiple terrorist organizations that killed kids because of their religion in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. So ho hum on those paragons of migratory decency – and I say this as someone with a Catholic Irish family that I regularly would visit in Eire.

“What’s up with that” is not a scientific source, it is Anthony Watt’s blog on what he thinks is climate science. You can believe that hook, line and sinker for all I care, but have you ever asked yourself why he doesn’t just write a paper that is rigorous enough to be taken seriously and wait for his inevitable Nobel prize?

My experience interacting with science deniers is that when push comes to shove, underneath it all there is a grand conspiracy to hide the truth from us all. If most of these people spend 10% of the time they do concocting pretzel logic to support their cherry picked examples, they could go and read the underlying papers in respected journals and be on far more firm footing.

I suppose you are the expert on climate science. Anthony Watt and his contributors provide some expertise on climate science, more so than the AWG group. But if you are the absolute authority i would love to see your credentials and those of the people you work with, assuming you have any degree in science.

Normally I wouldn’t bother with you. You take a statistic, a simple descriptive statistic on the murder rate in the US and ?Germany and wish to use it as some sort of “analysis” to prove some mystical point. I call that ignorance. I don’t suffer fools very well and I apologize, but when I encounter someone with an agenda who pretends to offer intelligent dialogue i am a bit short with them. I am not here to pick arguments. I am certainly no friend of AGW, which to my mind is a con game of the worst kind. But I don’t understand your approach. Am I suppose to bow to your superiority? Is that it. You offer history as a scientific explanation of the idiocy of AWG as if that is all it took. I’m sorry, how does one prove scientific theory with the use of history. then you offer some history of the Irish immigration without the least bit of knowledge. did you not know that the Irish and the Scottish since 1724? Their immigration has been a fact of US history since about 1700 and continued as late as 1920. Your ignorance amazes me.

But if it will please your vanity then I submit you are right in every detail. Your have superior knowledge, intellect, and moral status. Good day to you sir.

I’ll side with the Nobel prize winners, you side with the bloggers. I’ve talked to enough science deniers to know that no about of reason and no conclusive a fact will allow them to commit the greatest achievement of the best scientists – the ability to utter the words “I was wrong.”

Enjoy your worldview. Don’t expect any respect for it however in a scientific discussion.

Let’s see how this works out when Germany allies itself with Russia and China. The US is going to reap what it sows and it won’t even have friendly nations on its north or south borders. Can you say USSA? I knew you could.

I saw that too. After WWII, the US sat on top of Germany to force a long-term cultural change. And with Britain weak, the USA became the world hegemon.

This is Germany’s chance to reassert its place in the world. This time as hegemon of the rest of Europe. Imagine German manufacturing and technological prowess tied to Chinese labor and Russian resources.

Who needs a dumb leader like Trump? Dump him ASAP.
E.g. BMW’s largest production facility is in the US.
Daimler is here and hundreds of German?European car suppliers.
So far the leader of the US has achieved what?
Hmmmm, ok he pushed through his Supreme Court candidate (by using the nuclear option LOL
what else? Any new laws signed and sealed?
No but he united Europe – even Poland is now on board with Merkel – it is hard to believe how dumb some can be.
Brexit will be fun – latest polls show a significant tightening – not the 20% – no it is now around 5% – surprise – surprise. That could become a pop and no kick ( aka Rohrkrepierer)

The whole problem with climate change is it requires international action. Including the United States.

Why climate change is seen as a partisan issue in the US is utterly beyond me. Seemingly intellectual people like you, Mish, suddenly believe in a conspiracy theory that essentially zero scientists believe in just because you lay to the right of the political spectrum.

I live in the UK and I’m also to the right of the political spectrum but here we treat climate change for what it is: a very worrying fact.

Let me explain it to you, Ben, at least from the perspective of one well-informed Yank:

Trying–TRYING–to do something about ‘climate change’ (a) is damnably expensive, (b) demands the participation of the two biggest contributors to the problem (India and China) who now choose better living standards over massively disrupting their economies, (c) requires billions of people in advanced industrial economies to accept huge changes in their lifestyles, and (d) has an uncertain pay-off that is decades in the future, if then. The fact that the hysteria to ‘do something’ has more of its basis in politics than in science further complicates the issue.

Let me elaborate on that last sentence. The ‘consensus,’ such as it is, in the scientific community is rooted in the need for funding to keep their research–and their lifestyles–afloat. I have read numerous horror stories about scientists in academe and elsewhere whose careers have hit a wall because their refusal to accept the political hysteria of the Left. There have been instances of data changed to produce a foregone conclusion about climate change rather than the conclusion that would have resulted from the objective analysis of said data. The rigid pro-climate-change bias of those who edit most scientific journals has also come to light. That makes their journals sources of propaganda, not of fact.

Finally, when we in the States observe the failure of 23 of the 28 NATO members to live up to an agreement signed by all 28 countries to spend 2% of their annual GDP to defend themselves–when we Americans are on the hook to defend them whether they make that investment in their own security or not–millions of Americans are understandably reluctant to make big changes in our lifestyles just because a bunch of whining European namby-pamby pacifists demand that we do that. The fact that Merkel insisted on, in essence, changing the character of the European continent by giving a ‘Y’all come!’ green light to millions of unassimilating Muslims gives her zero credibility on any big issue to most Americans, including this one.

Mostly drivel. You should talk to well informed people before you trot this nonsense out.

Fixing the impact of our growing CO2 levels is easy – but it will create disruption in some industries that have invested a lot of money into DC so they can bend our politics to their will. A simple carbon tax that offsets corporate taxes will address global warming in a couple of decades. No need for more taxes, just taxing some people more and others less to let capitalism work its magic. Basically 99% of the tax code does the same thing in some way, so it isn’t like it is anything new.

Obligations: if you purport to be “well informed” you need to back up your claims with references to reliable facts.

When you do that, I’ll back up the term “drivel” to your satisfaction – but I probably won’t need to use the term because you’ll actually become well informed when you go to the raw statistics and/or peer reviewed papers in respected journals and point to them to support your argument.

One country has a massive demographics problem so unilaterally opens its borders with little to no vetting to improve its age profile. It then decides those arriving should be shared by other countries also that neither invited the newcomers, nor needs them, nor wants them.

Welcome to the German controlled EU.

A Germany racked by guilt for previous attrocities and want to share the cost of appeasing that guilt with others that were on the receiving end of some of those atrocities perpetrated by Germany.

Techniques change, the desired outcome the same. They have learnt little, they still want control, dominance. Others are stupid enough to comply.

I think you are right that Germany is using refugees to fix its demographics timebomb – our high levels of immigration have been doing the same thing for decades until a really smart businessman from New York decided to fix it and turn us into a country of 200 million baby boomers trying to get full SS and medicare benefits from a couple of dozen millennials flipping burgers.

But why would Germany then let these valuable future workers stray all over the rest of Europe? Surely Berlin would be pushing to create special passports for German refugees that were invalid in the rest of the Schengen Zone?

We probably should not get too het-up over Merkel’s reaction. The Germans are very serious people and probably take Trump too seriously. He on the other hand is a businessman on a mission that knows how to raise emotion and get reaction with red herrings and apparent dogmatism. Probably runs meetings that way. It’s called softening up before the real deal emerges to everyones relief.

What’s the real deal – I guess he wants to separate some Europeans from their money and to get them so worried they accept some pain to get the USA back on side.

We have a government that will give away entire industries with poorly negotiated trade agreements, well funded “free trade” think tanks that pay “economists” to extol the benefits of an irrelevant 19th century economic concept, a financial industry that will gladly destroy entire communities if a foreign government pays them enough, a central bank that will gladly supply dollars to mercantilist countries so they can continue to maintain their trade surpluses, and a buffoon for a president who thinks his own pathetic tweets are more important than the lives of the people who elected him. We are screwed. Get used to it.

We are the most devoted followers of destructive capitalism, plus we also don’t believe in a strong safety net. That means that we let capitalism create winners and losers instead of protecting losers, but don’t help the people who, mostly through no fault of their own, are collateral damage.

Most of the rest of the World has a lot to learn from the American free trade example, and maybe we need to learn a bit from the European nanny state when it comes to protecting Americans in a very dynamic economy.

So, lemme make sure I have this straight: You’re saying, in essence, that the U.S. doesn’t spend enough to help those who cannot–or, too frequently, WILL NOT–help themselves. I guess you don’t know that the dollar-value of the economic benefits of being 100% on welfare–food stamps, Medicaid, et al.–come to about $45,000 annually. That’s about $22/hr. And that’s not enough?

There’s more: For whom do you think those on welfare long-term vote? The same people who want to keep making them more dependent by giving them more and more services that they haven’t earned.

So let’s see, it isn’t $22 per person – it is per household. And you can’t provide a link, as expected. So no supporting evidence, again. How exactly did you come to the conclusion you are well informed if you don’t have any ability to supply the sources of your information?

So, still no link to the government site where I can sign up for these. Also, I need to have two kids as well – something you omitted to state. Your link shows intellectual laziness – following through the links you end up at a presentation from Gary Alexander, the Secretary of Public Welfare for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in 2012. He prefaces the $45,000 number with the following: single mom, two kids age 1 and 4 living in PA, no disabilities and the kids are in a star 4 childcare center.

The point was to show welfare cliffs as the mother started earning more money – and it is a good presentation. It is not an example of any random person in America deciding they can’t be bothered working any longer (the childcare center should have been a big red flag).

So there is no link to a Government web site where any random person can sign up for $45,000 per year indefinitely.

What really upsets me about the German attitude is that they have forced the U.S. to devote umpteen billions of dollars every year in military spending at the expense of the long term viability of our social programs. They also forced us into a war with Iraq at a cost of some more trillions!

All that time that they forced us to invest in our military they basically said – well sine we’ve got the U,S. paying for more tanks than they can ever use, we can save our money to invest in free tertiary education, strong social programs and building the workforce for the future.

The pro-German lobby in DC that has such a stranglehold on our spending decisions has to go!

I respectfully disagree. The Germans haven’t ‘forced’ us to do anything. Have they ‘persuaded’ us? Plausibly. Have they offloaded their responsibility to us? Possibly. But ‘forced’? Maybe under Obama, not any more. They don’t have the horsepower to do that.

Free trade is a disaster for American business in that American business gets more profits from using cheap labor abroad instead of expensive labor at home. This has to stop. Capitalism isn’t meant to work this way – companies taking advantage of the efficiencies of the market is just plain Marxism. Thank goodness we have great thinkers who know how to thwart capitalism and bring jobs home. And put coal miners back to work. Hat blockers – there is an underserved constituency – when, oh when, are we going to pass laws mandating hats again!

With respect, I think there’s more to it than just the price of labor. The productivity of that labor matters, too. A simple example: If an American worker is paid $20/hr. and is more than 20 times as productive as a worker in, say, China, then, in fact, the American worker is the less-expensive producer.

My premise is that the top 5% of earners in India are probably just about as well educated and therefore productive as the bottom 5% Americans – this includes people who live in cardboard boxes under the freeway, I hasten to remind you.

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